Today’s speaker was Keith Hellawell on the subject of “One Life?”.
He began by congratulating the club on celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Keith explained the title came from a comment when someone said he had done so much in just one life.
Keith was born in Holmfirth, moved to Huddersfield when he was 4 and has worked all over the world.
He began life working down the coal mine at Emley Moor until his wife said he could do better so he joined the police force. At the examination the chief constable accused him of cheating by scoring 100% in the maths section. Two ad hoc questions answered correctly proved he hadn’t. At the end of the interview when asked if he had any questions, he promptly wrote down a maths equation for the chief constable to solve. He still got the job. He became a sergeant and then inspector at unusually young ages.
He was seconded to the Home Office as an IT adviser in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. He lived in Bournemouth but flew to Belfast. He had a driver who was shot and a bodyguard who was killed. At one time, he was No 7 on the IRA hit list.
Keith worked on the Yorkshire Ripper case part time. After Sutcliffe’s arrest, other forces wanted to interview him about their unsolved murders. There were 64 initially, some of which Sutcliffe could not possibly have committed. This was reduced to 20 possible then finally 10 probable. Keith then became an advisor in the development of the HOLMES system on the user requirements not the technical side. During interviews, Sutcliffe was a normal reasonable person until he switched to the gory details of the murders, how there was no resistance when you pushed a screwdriver into someone’s eye.
As a result of his involvement he was asked by the FBI to advise them. He was offered a job by the Los Angeles Police Department. He gave lectures on serial killers to many rural and urban forces. He was not impressed by the organisation of policing in the USA. 50 years behind the UK. Policing is fragmented i.e, multiple police forces within a city, no common standards, no common procedures, chiefs and senior officers are political appointees and many forces didn’t have the basic resources to investigate major crimes such as murder.
Keith became the Drug Czar. When the post was advertised, he didn’t apply until the Prime Minister’s office asked him to do so. It was his privilege to write the national drug strategy which he did in a 4-hour overnight stint.
He started an IT company which he sold eventually for £200,000,000.
There was lots more and it’s easy to see why his talk was entitled “One Life?”